Sharia in Canada

[AuntieEmma[$]]

Now I was able to access the NAWL report. Again, I just took a quick look.

They appear to disagree with something that I wrote above -->

I said

I think in general part of empowering women is to allow women to make the choices they want to make as far as how to live their own lives, rather than forcing them to make the choices that someone else believes would be better for them -- even if that someone else is a woman and/or an organization that calls itself feminist.

This seems to be getting into an old argument in feminism, about whether it is better to aim for equality of opportunity or for equality of results, with the NAWL people appearing to endorse the latter. The problem, IMO, with the equality of results position is that it often ends up requiring that women need to have special protections -- which IMO can backfire.

Anyway, we're getting far away from the "Islam is Icky" argument, which is good, but I think what NAWL is putting on the table is harder to discuss in sound bites.

My inclination is still to lean towards what Marion Boyd has come up with because of all the parties that have weighed in, she seems most concerned with preserving both religious freedom and women's freedom.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

Here, you can see the theoretical clash between what I was saying (which appears to be similar to Marion Boyd's perspective), and what NAWL is saying. (Note that these intra-feminist arguments can quickly become VERY theoretical). The highlighting, in red, is mine -->

NAWL report said

Marion Boyd has argued that it is inappropriate to require a universal application of the laws adopted to protect women in the “private” sphere and that women should be free to “live as they choose”.[72] This neoliberal vision of “choice” disregards not only the painful dynamics of divorce and separation, but most importantly, the overall social and economic context of the lives of many women: susceptibility to homelessness upon the breakdown of a marriage, the precariousness of immigration status, abject poverty and persistent racism. Given the inability of most women to afford legal counsel and the fact that ideological and religious groups may offer free mediation and arbitration services, women’s free choice remains dubious. The discourse in favour of choice is reminiscent of arguments of the freedom of individual workers to bargain fairly the terms of a contract with an employer, now discredited through the well-established mechanism of unions and minimum wage legislation. The notion of free choice in the context of family arbitration is gender-insensitive as it does not take into consideration the real power dynamics at play and the collective rights at stake for women.
Feminists have often said that “the personal is political”. What is meant by this statement is that in the intimate, “private” and “personal” space of the family women are all too often subjected to discrimination, exploitation and abuse by men. These gendered, systemic patterns of sexual inequality need to be acknowledged and taken into account in state policy. While the Canadian government and even the international legal order has come to recognize their obligation to correct violations against women in the “private” sphere, arbitration threatens to put women back to the realm of “family government” principles or rules of religious elites who have not demonstrated a commitment to the egalitarian principles established through the years.

In a society where sexual inequality of women is still systemic, women need to be ensured of “equal protection” and “equal benefit” of the law. All women need to be secure in the knowledge that they will be protected by state legislation and official courts that are accountable and that act according to the rule of law and democratically- adopted legal frameworks.

http://www.lcc.gc.ca/research_projec...t_part4-en.asp

As I was saying earlier, the difference in outlook between Marion Boyd and NAWL is a continuation of a very old argument within feminism, which goes far beyond this specific question of Sharia law in Canada.

Also notice that if Canada were to follow the NAWL recommendations, that would be a far more radical change than if they were to follow Boyd's. Boyd's proposed changes are more in the line of reform, while NAWL's are more revolutionary. (And notice the contempt that the NAWL writer has for what she calls "neoliberals" -- that's the contempt of the radical for the reformer.)

Actually, sometimes I really like the radical approach. But in this situation, for various reasons, I don't.

[hymie[$]]

And this is exactly why paleoliberals no longer win elections in this country. To them, the only freedom worth respecting is the freedom to choose what they believe is right. If you choose otherwise, you have chosen incorrectly, and it must be because you are stupid or coerced, and therefore your choice must be ignored. It's rather like the old Soviet Union, where disagreement with the state was considered a sign of mental illness.

[eris esoteric]

hymie said

And this is exactly why paleoliberals no longer win elections in this country. To them, the only freedom worth respecting is the freedom to choose what they believe is right. If you choose otherwise, you have chosen incorrectly, and it must be because you are stupid or coerced, and therefore your choice must be ignored. It's rather like the old Soviet Union, where disagreement with the state was considered a sign of mental illness.

But is it just the paleoliberals who are falling into this paradigm? From what I've seen, it's becoming a national mind-set, regardless of what your socioeconomicreligio leanings lately to regard anyone who disagrees with you as insane, and therefore not worth talking to.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

From what I've seen, it's becoming a national mind-set, regardless of what your socioeconomicreligio leanings lately to regard anyone who disagrees with you as insane, and therefore not worth talking to.

There's a difference between a mind set and working to enforce one's mind set via legislation. It's one thing to think that someone is insane and not worth talking to, and another to try to protect them from their own supposedly insane choices by making those choices illegal.

[eris esoteric]

Of course there's a difference. One is a motivation, and the other is an action.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

Why did the ACLU take the action of defending the Nazi group that wanted to march through a neighborhood where many Holocaust survivors lived? It wasn't because the ACLU was motivated by sympathy for or agreement with the Nazis, or because the ACLU thought the Nazis were worth listening to or that they were not insane. They did it because they believed that in order to protect speech for everybody, you have to protect the speech that is most hated. It's easy to defend speech that is popular, but it's necessary to protect speech that is not.

Same thing with religious practices.

In the ACLU case, actions and motivations were the opposite. The action was to find a way to allow speech - the motivation for picking that particular speech was that the speech was hated, even by its defenders.

[hymie[$]]

Speaking of freedom, choice, and liberals, here's a conundrum: Liberals consider it good, even noble, practice for a doctor to honor a person's request and use surgery and chemicals to mutilate the person's body into an outer semblance of its opposite gender, but dangerous and evil quackery for a doctor to honor a person's request to attempt to redirect sexual orientation away from the person's own gender to the opposite one.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

That's easy -- one works and the other doesn't. Someone goes to a doctor and says, "Will you please mutilate my body to form an outer semblance of the opposite gender, the way you told me you could," and they get what they requested. It's truth in advertising. But no doctor or anyone else has been shown to be able to permanently change someone's sexual orientation. Claims to the contrary appear to be fraudulent.